Pictures of the Future    Spring 2007

A Door that’s Always Open

Online access to e-government services offers citizens faster and more direct contact to information—and helps make many administrative procedures simpler and more transparent

Whether it’s dealing with tax authorities or passport offices, for most citizens a date with officialdom is a wearisome business. Yet this is changing radically. Today, more and more citizens are conducting their business with public authorities online. This also benefits administrative bodies, because it streamlines an entire range of processes, which means cost savings—and greater transparency. If, for example, administrative processes can be inspected online, citizens can find out at any time what’s holding up, say, a building permit.

In the past, individual desks or departments would have to wait for their turn to process an application, but putting this procedure online makes it possible for all of them to work on it in parallel. "That’s got to make things at least twice as fast as before," estimates Dr. Johannes Dotterweich, head of the Siemens e-government laboratory in Berlin. And to meet data protection requirements, the circle of people with authorized access is defined very carefully and protected by means of digital signatures.

The countries of the European Union are at the forefront of this trend. A June 2006 EU Report about online access to the public sector praises Austria, Malta, Estonia, the Scandinavian countries and the UK. Germany is likewise credited with significant progress. German federal authorities have come a long way in the wake of the "Government Online 2005" program, especially on the ministerial level.

Making Communities More Attractive. Meanwhile, "Government Online 2010," the follow-up initiative, is intended to improve the degree of networking between federal, state and local governments, and to close any gaps. In Nuremberg, for example, the introduction of an open SAP system for citizens has freed up a greater number of city employees to answer tax-related inquiries. What’s more, it’s also reduced the time it takes to get a response to requests for information. The improvement in such services also makes a city or federal state more attractive for businesses in the process of choosing a location. That’s a major reason why IT administrators in local government are increasingly on the lookout for good online solutions.

One good place to find out about all the latest technological advances in this field is the Siemens e-government lab (see  e-Government in Pictures of the Future, Spring 2006). A project in Berlin illustrates the financial benefits that such technology can bring for public authorities. Back in 2004, the city’s police department changed to an electronic system for processing traffic-related fines. This has resulted in more efficient structures and has yielded considerable cost savings.

According to Dr. Karl-Heinz Weber, who heads the project, there is another important benefit—an enormous saving in filing space. In the days when each case was printed on paper, a clerk had to go through the mail each day and file the documents away. That took up not only time but also yards and yards of shelf space. But now that the files are electronic, fines can be processed and issued more quickly. "There is less chance that a fine will expire, which also leads to fewer appeals and better payment rates," explains Weber.

For budgetary reasons, lots of municipal authorities are working with solutions that are based on existing processes and services. To network them, all the departments involved should be able to automatically read and fully process all the various data formats.

Frequently, however, the software in use today doesn’t permit this. To get around this problem authorities are increasingly turning to open formats and standards, such as XML and open-source software. Using XML-based formats provides another advantage: The data can also be exchanged with small, mobile devices such as cell phones or multimedia devices. "That way, authorities can provide forms online for a variety of devices and even for mobile applications, which also makes it possible to query an incorrectly completed form by means of a short text message to a cell phone," explains Dr. Jörg Heuer, who heads Service Infrastructure and Multimedia Services at Siemens Corporate Technology.

Chipcard Access. Guaranteeing data protection requires the use of smartcards and readers. The use of intelligent chipcards is very much on the increase, as evidenced by the establishment of a trust center, in compliance with legislation on the use of digital signatures, for the German Pension Insurance Fund. Today, roughly 54,000 employees use the Siemens system, which features multifunctional chipcards for access control, logging working hours, and the digital signature of documents, thus enabling fast and efficient electronic business processes. And that’s not all. Siemens employees can log onto the system with their company ID card and obtain encrypted access to their personal pension plan. There are also similar IT solutions available for notary’s offices, the tax authorities, real-estate recording offices; for passports, ID cards, health insurance and social security; for emergency management, purchasing rail tickets—even for paying parking fines.

PPPs (public-private partnerships) are one option for public-sector agencies that are unwilling to carry the entire capital expenditure for the new technology. Examples of this form of funding in Germany include Herkules, a cooperation project between the military and a consortium of Siemens and IBM. The project has a volume of approximately 7.1 bill. € and a duration of ten years. Thanks to Herkules, the armed forces’ computer centers, PCs, software, applications, telephones, and voice and data networks will be up to the very latest technical standards. Siemens is responsible for the modernization and operation of the decentralized systems at more than 1,500 army locations in Germany, comprising some 140,000 PCs, 7,000 servers, 300,000 fixed-line and 15,000 cell phones—as well as the management of local and national voice and data networks. It is the largest contract ever secured by Siemens and also the largest PPP project in all of Europe.
                                                                                                                Martin Arnold